Spotlight Podcast: New Jersey's Anti-Bullying Law

Now that the state's anti-bullying law is broke, what happens to the protections it's meant to offer?

A decade ago New Jersey was in the forefront of the movement to stop bullying in its schools. This past year it enacted one of the toughest anti-bullying laws in the country.

And yet there is currently no funding for that law. The money that was set aside for enforcement was spent last year.

How the state arrived at this dead-end, and what may be done about it, is the subject of this week's conversation between NJ Spotlight's education editor, John Mooney, and NewsWorks New Jersey's editor Josh Simeone.

In the course of their discussion they touch upon the troubled history of the law itself: it was challenged as an unfunded mandate by a New Jersey school district. What the $1 million ultimately allocated to the law -- about $1 a schoolkid --paid for. And whether being strapped for cash means the law is dormant.